


let go your heart into (my) the trees' embrace

by philthestone



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, and stuff, leia's sudden awareness of how she feels the existence force, rotj mushiness im in pain ok im gonna deny tfa forever, smushy nonsense from ages ago?, u kno - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 18:45:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5977282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They lie in the long grass, their tired fingers intertwined, and Leia says, "I can feel you, you know," as if he didn't already guess.</p>
<p>(But that's alright; he trusts her, after all.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	let go your heart into (my) the trees' embrace

**Author's Note:**

> IM IN PAIN OK anyway i brushed off an old prompt from a billion years ago, pls observe as i cry into the snowstorm outside, "THEY DESERVE TO BE HAPPY"
> 
> reviews are love and blessings (tm) anyhoops thanks for reading folks

"It's like I'd almost forgotten what it feels like to be happy," she says, into the indigo darkness of the night sky above them.

He turns his head in the grass the face her properly and gets a mouthful of her hair instead. 

“Really?” And he’s not sure if it’s a genuine question or just the appropriate thing to say, because a small, selfish part of him ( _you are the most arrogant, self-centered person I have the misfortune of knowing_ , she snaps, and her hair is tightly braided and her eyes are blazing) wants to claim that happiness as his own doing; but he also can’t help but think that there are so many things still _wrong_ that that can’t be an accurate statement.

“ _Well_ ," she says, and she’s drawing out the words carefully. One of her arms is lain over her head in the grass, her fingers toying with the underbrush. It is an uncharacteristically relaxed movement. “If I _really_ think about it - you know, really really, not just an impulsive ‘I’m happy’.”

“Huh,” he says, and pretends that his arm hasn’t gone numb in its position under her neck. He feels her head turn on his arm and finds her looking at him with a spark in her eye that he’s seen only a few select times in the past.

“I’ve always loved it when you say that.”

“When I say what?”

She grins. “‘ _Huh_ ’. Like you’re actually _thinking -_ "

“Hilarious, your worship. I’m just dying inside.”

She giggles, and he takes advantage of his completely senseless arm’s position under her and uses it as a hook, tugging her over so that she’s no longer laying on the grass but on top of him.

“There are Ewoks around,” she tells him solemnly. “I am not doing this with Ewoks around.”

“Am I really that transparent?”

“Mmm.”

“Well, you started it.”

“That,” she says, “is _manifestly_ untrue.”

"You’re also drunk.”

“You’re drunker.”

“More drunk,” he corrects, grinning at her, and she wrinkles her nose at him because that’s _her_ line, thank you very much.

She starts playing with the lose thread on the collar of his shirt, and he tilts his head back to look up at the stars. Which is, you know, an incredible cliche thing to do - but then, it almost feels like they just won a war against all odds (inaccurate; they won a battle, one of many), and maybe he thinks he's never loved another sentient being more than he does her (substantially more accurate, though by this point Han's not quite sure "love" - such a simple, mono-syllabic Basic word - covers it all), and he can’t think of anything more cliche than that. So. He’s got the right to this one thing, hasn’t he?

(Or something; he admits that he, too, might be a little drunk.)

“I can feel you, you know,” she says suddenly, and it takes him a moment to look back down at her. He raises an eyebrow.

“You may be lying on top of me,” he says, “but it’s gonna take a bit more than -”

“Not like _that_ ,” she says, rolling her eyes, the movement so exaggerated that he can still see it clearly in the shadowy, dappled twilight. “I can feel you - just you - look, close your eyes.”

"What?”

“Just trust me.”

He does.

“What do you feel?”

Her heartbeat, for one. The sounds of the forest and the breeze, heavy with victory and intermingled with the muffled sounds of celebration on the other side of the glade; the way the wind moves whisperwhisper through the trees and maybe, if he thinks hard enough, the flow of the river they saw earlier that morning. And maybe there’s a little more feeling in his arm, and -

“Life,” he breathes, and he knows, even though his eyes are closed, that she’s smiling. He opens them. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

She traces a finger over his cheek. The pads of her fingers are no longer soft, as they were the first time he held her hand (so soon after meeting, a desperate, rough grab as they rushed through the monochrome halls of the now-obliterated Death Star).

“It’s more than that. It’s existence. It’s … it’s _everything,_ Han. And I can feel it.”

“More than me,” he guesses, and she bites her lip.

“I don’t know. I just - I suddenly _know_ when you’re - when you’re there, you know?”

"Suddenly as in just today, or suddenly as in this has been a thing you’ve noticed since. I dunno. Whenever.”

“It’s gotten stronger. It got stronger today.” She pauses, fingers stiffening on his cheek. “I think it’s the Force.”

He doesn’t say anything, and just watches her, with her bigbig eyes shining liquid in the moonlight and her hair draping over her face and tickling his nose. 

He thinks that he really should be taking this more seriously, this new knowledge and all its implications - but he _trusts_ her - her and Luke, the both of them, those homeless kids that needed him as much as he needed them. 

He trusts her far too much for this to bother him.

(He doesn't articulate this. He thinks that maybe by this point, she almost knows.)

So he says, _“huh,”_ and grins when she bursts out laughing, realizes that he's only just remembering what it feels like to be happy, too.


End file.
